Visit at Swisscom Innovations (R&D lab)

Today with Pierre and Mauro we went to the cosy swiss capital (i.e Bern) to meet R&D people at Swisscom Innovations. Emmanuel Corthay presented us how the R&D unit work and gave us some details about what kind of project they carry out.
few numbers here:

people: 70 specialists (mostly engineers and IT specialists but also economists, psychologists, sociologists)

locations: zurich/bern/silicon valley (3 persons who do scouting/reporting about trends)

40MCHF yearly budgets

Mauro and I presented our research projects (Stamps and CatchBob!). Then we splitted into different groups to visits the lab. I managed the 'Economic and Social Aspects' (ESA) unit, whith focuses on the human side of technology (which mostly economists and sociologists). For some reasons, the folks in charge of usability are not part of that group.

In the ESA unit, I met Stefana Broadbent who is leading a group that watches social changes and technology usage (mostly from an ethnographical perspective). She gave a good overview of they did so far (studying families at home, performing various activities) and what they're planning to do in the future.

Then I met Regine Buschauer, whom I already known by reading thie blog. She described me one of the research projects she works on, which is related with place/space activities and location-based services.

An interesting thing at Swisscom innovation is that the structure of the buidling reflects the structure of the research units since each floor corresponds to a specific research group (for instance 7th floor = 'Economic and Social Aspects').

The whole day was interesting, it's very refreshing to see pertinent people in the area. There might be some possibilities to collaborate.